


the bookshop nemesis witch

by FlipSpring



Series: Everytime We Touch AU [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1 cuss word, Gen, Linked Footnotes, POV Outsider, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), a bookshop & a bookshopkeeper & a bookshopkeeper's weird boyfriend, as seen through the eyes of a Regular, bad bookshopkeeping practices, because yr a 15 year old trans girl with a Thirst for Knowledge, illegally downloading magical knowledge in the back of a magical bookshop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: The life and times of Nicole Percival Castings, Witch. Featuring: her ongoing love/rivalry with a particular magical bookstore, an Eccentric(TM) shopkeeper who keeps a huge snake in aforementioned bookstore, finding oneself and one's magical power, the cyclicality of life.*A rather tall, peculiar-looking man jangled into the shop. He was clad all in back, and wore dark glasses indoors, and stood at a jumble of odd angles, as though the presence of his legs weren't quite to his liking. He stood just inside the entrance, hands half into his pockets, half out."Aziraphaaaaaaale," he crowed, "Dinner?"





	the bookshop nemesis witch

**Author's Note:**

> yeah I’m writing fanfic of my own fanfic shut up 
> 
> as I was reading and appreciating my own fanfic (shut up. also go read it. pt one of this series apparently), the bookshop nemesis who comes in and buys one of Aziraphale’s books while his guard is down cuz he’s angsting about crowley... she snagged my imagination. Whaddaya do.
> 
> should i instead be revamping the og fic that inspired this and cleaning it up and making it flow better and adding better Tangible Descriptionss? probably but i refuse to listen to anybody, including myself

Nicole Percival Castings was a witch by choice. One might have thought, given her name, that she was born to it [1]. This was not the case. Her path towards witchcraft began around the age of six, when she ground up some berries and leaves in a pit of dirt in her mother's back garden, and declared it a potion that would change her gender. She wanted to be a girl.

The potion worked, but not in the way she'd expected. Side effects included a trip to the emergency room, a stomach pump, and a stern telling-off by her mother. To be fair, she had only been six years old, and her prior experience at practicing magic was zilch. But this incident started her down a lifelong path. From one spark of true power, and berries and leaves in the dirt.

From thereon, she stumbled along the dark path of magic, guided only by instinct and the occasional television show about vampires. The shows weren't very helpful in a practical sense, but they did provide inspiration, which is important in and of itself.

By the age of nine, her potion-making had improved greatly, assisted by a more grounded knowledge of plants. At the age of eleven, she successfully summoned the ghost of her dead cat, Pudding. At the age of thirteen, she managed to set her very mean and rude schoolteacher's hat on fire using only the power of her mind [2].

At fifteen, she was out and about on her very own for the first time, finally broken free from the overprotective hovering of her parents. She was fifteen, and alone, and in London's Soho. A particular bookstore caught her eye.

She liked bookstores, as a rule. But there was something about this one. By now she had a reliable eye for the occult, for the supernatural, for the ethereal. She didn't actually know that she had an eye for it, but she had it nevertheless. And her eye was focused quite strongly upon this bookstore.

There was something about it. Some essence. Some sort of brightness that wasn't accounted for by the gloomy, clouded sunlight. Some sort of unearthly vibration.

She opened the door to the bookstore. A bell tied to the door jangled, brightly.

She was immediately greeted by an enormous (enormous meaning absolutely sod-off huge, the first twenty feet of its massive body immediately visible, the rest of it hidden behind some bookshelves) black snake.

This startled her. But she was a witch (or wanted to be). And in her mind, witches weren't afraid of snakes.

The snake reared its head and hissed at her, flicked its forked tongue. She remained rooted to the spot. Unconsciously, she gripped her umbrella more tightly.

Her supernatural eye registered that the snake seemed amused. But her main consciousness wasn't quite in tune with her supernatural eye yet, and was unaware of this fact.

The snake hissed again. She gripped her umbrella still tighter, refusing to be afraid, because she was a witch.

The snake reared its head up still higher, tongue flicking.

 _"Crowley,"_ said a voice, from elsewhere in the bookshop. The voice sounded reprimanding, but in a halfhearted sort of way.

The snake dropped to the floor and slithered off into the shop. But because it was so sod-off huge, its body continued to flow along the floor in front of Nicole for a good long eternity.

She looked to the source of the voice. Her fifteen-year-old eyes registered the shape of some old guy sitting in a plush armchair halfway back in the bookshop. He had one leg crossed over the other, and was reading a book. The massive snake was draping itself over him, a smooth black river, a tongue flickering, a golden, slitted eye staring out. Its snakey mouth seemed to smirk.

Nicole, with the sudden and perfect clarity of a fifteen-year-old unpolished witch, realized that she wanted to be just like this bookstore dude when she grew up. _He_ knew what was up.

"Sorry about the snake," said the man, not sounding sorry at all. Not looking up from his book. The snake hissed, again. Nicole knew enough about the biology of snakes to know that it was rather strange for the snake to be hissing so much, and so loudly. But this was an idle thought. A more pressing thought was clamoring at the front of her mind. If there was anywhere to find any _real_ information on magic, surely it would be this bookstore.

"Do you got any books on witchcraft?" she asked.

The man did not answer.

She stepped closer, but not too close. "I said," she said, "Do you got any books on witchcraft?"

The man looked up from his book. His snake had settled its head over his shoulder, and was looking at her, too.

"Well, yes, I suppose," the man waved vaguely at all the cluttered stacks and shelves of books, "Over there."

He hadn't gestured in any particular direction. Nicole waited for clarification. When none came, she backed away a bit, and started to browse. The books were on all sorts of topics organized in no recognizable order. They ranged between old and extremely old. She was hesitant to touch most of them.

By chance (where chance includes an application of her own magical desire), she came across a thick, weathered book entitled, simply, _"Potion Making."_ Its contents looked distinctly magical, to her occult eye.

She leaned against a shelf, and began reading.

When she came back to herself, and checked her watch, she realized that she'd spent far more time in the store than she'd meant to. She'd meant to see much more of the city. But if she didn't start heading home very soon, she'd be late, and her parents wouldn't let her back out for forever, probably.

But she hadn't finished the book. She had some pocket money in her wallet that she'd saved up for the excursion.

Book in hand, she approached the man in the armchair. He hadn't moved the entire time she'd been here. Neither had his snake.

"Um," she said, "Excuse me. How much does this book cost?"

The man looked up. He gave her and appraising look. He scowled, a bit, and said, "Eighty pounds."

Her shoulders slumped. "Oh."

"We only take credit cards," the man added.

"... Uh," said Nicole. She'd never heard of a place that only took credit cards. And being fifteen and having overprotective parents, she didn't have a credit card.

"Okay," she said, "I'll go put this back."

The man watched her owlisly as she went and placed _Potion Making_ exactly back where she'd found it. She got the distinct sense of a store proprietor keeping an eye on a teen hooligan. Did he think she would steal it?

Just for that, she thought she might like to _actually_ steal it.

She put the book back, and left the store.

~

She came back to the store three months later. This time, she was not greeted by the gigantic snake. The shopkeeper sat alone in the same armchair, looking all the world exactly as he had last time she'd come. She had the odd feeling that he hadn't moved at all in three months,

"Where's the snake?" she asked him.

He looked up.

"He's ... visiting family," the man said.

"Oh. Okay," said Nicole. She went over to where she'd left _Potion Making_ last time. It wasn't there. Perhaps someone had bought it. She hadn't expected someone else to drop eighty pounds on an old potion-making book.

She circled around the shop. She browsed idly through books about plants, and astronomy, and art. And then she stumbled upon _Potion Making,_ which had been tucked in the middle of a big stack of books in the corner.

That was weird.

Nicole glanced suspiciously at the shopkeeper, and removed the book from the stack, and opened it where she'd left off. She'd brought a notepad and a pen this time, and took notes while crouched behind a tall shelf.

When she was out of time, she slipped the book back, and tucked her notebook away in her backpack, and slunk out the store. The shopkeeper appeared not to notice her. The door jangled brightly as she let it close.

She used her notes from _Potion Making_ to craft the most powerful magical potion she'd yet created.

 _What matters most to potion making is the focus of the potioneer's intent,_ the book had said. _The Symbolic nature of the ingredients and the environment lend assistance through years of history, through the strength of intent from potioneers long past._

_Physical changes are not achievable through non-physical magic. Chemistry and Physics are king amongst the magics of the material realm. That said, magics that influence the numinous quality of things are powerful in their own way, as the numinous quality of things will shape the physical quality of things, by inches, by degrees, by the perceptions of the mind, where the physical and metaphysical are able to interact._

"Make me a _girl,"_ Nicole whispered, into her crystal glass of potion, and drank it by the light of the moon. She stared out her window, afterwards, and wondered if she felt any different. She wasn't sure. Maybe it hadn't worked, and such a change was not possible. Or maybe it _had_ worked, crystalizing her intent, shattering her doubts, ensteeling the numinous quality of her soul.

In any case. That night, staring out into her mother's back garden, she decided that she would be a girl, irrevocably. That she was one. And a witch, to boot. She would make it happen. She _had_ made it happen. That night, she opened her desk-drawer, and pulled out a black rhinestone-studded hairclip that had been hidden amongst the clutter in the very back, and used it to clip back her slightly shaggy bangs. She stood in front of her window, and stared out at the back garden, and saw the shadow of her reflection, her hairclip twinkling inexplicably in the dark. 

She applied more focus to her Chemistry and Physics classes, after that.

~

The next time she went back to the bookstore, she was sixteen, almost seventeen. She'd let her hair grow longer, but only to a deniable sort of below-the-ear length. Puberty was making her voice do things she didn't like, so she'd taken to speaking very softly. 

But today, she was alone again, in London. She was wearing the hairclip outside. She had painted her nails black the night before, had kept them hidden in her pockets at school. She stood in front of the bookstore, her hands at her sides, standing terrified, feeling as though all eyes of all the strangers in the street were staring at her. But she gripped her umbrella tightly, and she told herself.

_You're a Witch. You can do this. You need to find more magic._

She went into the bookstore. The door jangled brightly.

The shopkeeper was at the counter, arguing with a customer. 

She slunk around the edges of the bookstore. She found a tome titled, _Energy Magic and Other Applications of Para-Realities,_ and crouched down in a corner, notepad and pen in hand.

About half an hour into her illegal downloading of magical knowledge, the shopkeeper suddenly appeared in front of her.

She froze. He was not a particularly tall man (nor particularly short), but here, he loomed.

"What're you doing here?" he asked her. His voice held the suggestion of sharpness.

She cringed, and then told herself off for cringing. She sat up straight.

"Well," she said, "I don't have a credit card. So I'm just reading."

He stared down at her. She stared up, defiant.

"Carry on then," he said, and rounded a shelf, leaving her to it.

Nicole blinked. This was not how shopkeepers typically reacted to people hiding away in their stores and reading their books with no intent of paying.

A moment later, the man came back around the shelf.

"I'm sorry," he said. His face and voice were much kinder than they had been previously. "Perhaps you'd like to sit? You can use the armchair."

It seemed rude to refuse. And the armchair would surely be more comfortable than the floor. She gathered up her things, and moved over to the armchair. He carried her backpack to the armchair for her.

"Thank you," she told him, cautiously, as he set the pack down beside her.

"Have you been here before, dear?" he asked, "You seem familiar."

"Um, yes," she said. She wasn't sure how she felt about this man calling her _dear._ It was a little delightful and a lot disturbing.

"May I ask your name?"

Her insides threw a very sudden, very loud riot. She had her _hairclip_ on, today, outside, in broad daylight. This very cool old dude who owned a store full of ancient books and a sod-off gigantic black snake was asking her name.

 _"N-Nicole,"_ she bit out, a bit too loud, a bit too fast. Her voice almost cracked.

The man blinked. "Well, Nicole," he said, and the easy way he said it was a sort of magic, a sort of seal on a spell that she'd been weaving and working at for over a decade. It brought her to life, to reality, to a reawakening, "Take as long as you like." And then his tone changed, became very weirdly menacing, "But _don't_ write in my books." 

And then he left her there, standing by the armchair, a book of magic and a battered notepad in hand.

She'd only spent another fifteen-ish minutes taking notes when a rather tall, peculiar-looking man jangled into the shop. He was clad all in back, and wore dark glasses indoors, and stood at a jumble of odd angles, as though the presence of his legs weren't quite to his liking. He stood just inside the entrance, hands half into his pockets, half out.

"Aziraphaaaaaaale," he crowed, "Dinner?"

Nicole stared at him. Her occult eye seemed to be trying to tell her something. She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen this man before. But she was sure she didn't recognize him. And surely she would have remembered anyone who sauntered around dressing and looking like that.

The shopkeeper bustled out from the back of the store. He glanced at Nicole. "Nicole, dear," he said, rather cheerfully, "I'm afraid we're closing."

She scrambled to put away her things. She picked up the book, about to put it back where she'd found it, but the shopkeeper just took it from her hands and set it on the nearest surface, shooing her out of the shop.

He locked up behind her. The black-clad man slouched under the eve of the building, head tilted to an awkward angle, swaying just slightly on his feet.

"The sign still says _open,"_ Nicole pointed out. The shopkeeper jumped a little, and then rapped on glass of the door with his knuckles, and the sign flipped itself around.

"How did you do that?" Nicole asked.

"Practissse," hissed the black-clad man, "Now move along, kid, we've got a prior engagement."

"It's not a prior anything, Crowley, you just barged in!" said the shopkeeper.

"Eh," said Crowley, and shifted some of his standing-angles. "I've got a temptation for you. You got anything for me? Head Office is up my entire ass these days. Let's go."

It was drizzling. The shopkeeper opened an umbrella that Nicole hadn't noticed. The black-clad man ducked under it, and the two of them went down the street.

She stared after them. She tried to work out the physics of what had just happened in her mind, but found that nothing quite added up. Until.

"Oh," she said to herself, "It's a _date."_

And she kept staring after them, delighted, and thought of how the shopkeeper had said her name, so easily, so naturally, _Nicole,_ and maybe this meant something? There was definitely something truly magical about this bookseller and his shop. There was definitely something fateful.

The two of them rounded the corner under the same umbrella, looking like a very incongruous pair. Outside the atmosphere of the bookshop, Nicole realized that the shopkeeper, too, looked very strange. He wasn't actually dressed like normal people dressed.

But who actually give a damn about normal? Nicole wasn't a witch because she wanted to be normal.

She opened up her own umbrella, and went on her way.

When she was on the train home, her memory presented her with the fact that the shopkeeper had also called the snake _Crowley._

But surely not. 

There were rules for the physical reality of things, after all. Perhaps it was a bit of a joke. Perhaps the shopkeeper had named his pet snake after his boyfriend, or something. What a weird couple, truly.

~

The first time Nicole really tried to buy a book from the shop, she was twenty-one years old. She had a credit card. Her hair was longer, braided and pinned up. Her clothes better suited her. Her confidence and magical ability were truly coming into their own. By now, she was a Force.

With _Potion Making_ in hand, she walked up to the shopkeeper.

"I'd like to buy this," she said.

Mr. Fell looked at the book in her hand. He looked at her. He looked betrayed. He said, "Oh."

She took out her wallet, and tugged at her credit card. She steeled herself for an expensive purchase of eighty pounds. For a book. But she had a job now. She had two jobs, in fact. And this wasn't just any book. Its guidance had greatly boosted her magical ability. She wanted to own it for herself.

"One hundred thirty pounds," he said, "We only take cash."

Nicole stopped, credit card in hand. She looked incredulously at the bookseller, and then down at the book, and then back at the bookseller.

"You told me it was eighty pounds, last time," she said.

Mr. Fell shifted. His eyes flickered to the left, then stared back at her, "Inflation," he said.

"Inflation," she repeated, incredulously. "Alright. And _last time,_ you said you only took credit cards."

"Change of policy," said Mr. Fell.

She kept staring at him.

"The machine... broke," said Mr. Fell.

"I would've thought it was the fees," said Nicole suspiciously.

Mr. Fell nodded. "Yes. Yes, those too."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Mr. Fell, you know I love your shop." [3] She paused. She continued, "But you first quoted me eighty pounds for this book, which even at the time I thought was overpriced. I'm going to the ATM, and I'm coming back with eighty pounds in cash, and I'm buying this book."

At this point, the shopkeeper looked quite flustered.

"Very well," he said.

She went out, and found an ATM, and withdrew eighty pounds, and returned to the store.

She found that the store was locked up, the sign turned to Closed.

Nicole peered through the door's window, and saw Mr. Fell duck out of sight into the back room.

"What the duck?" she muttered. 

And then a familiar determination settle into her spine.

"Oh," she said to herself, smiling, "It's _on."_

~

Over the course of her next few visits, her suspicion that Mr. Fell flat out didn't want to sell any of his books became a certainty. She wondered why he had a bookshop at all, if that was the case. Perhaps a witch had cursed him to the fate.

It became a sort of challenge, a sort of game. Nicole had to come into the shop with as much research and preparation at her back as she could. To each encounter she brought the full force of her considerable wits, determination, and magical ability. Even so, she only occasionally managed to purchase a book from the store. 

Now, when she managed to catch the store while it was open, Mr. Fell treated her with a sort of cool, wary courtesy. She missed the days in her teens when he'd welcome her with warmth and kindness, invite her to use the armchair. But her slavering desire to own these books of magic could not be impeded. And with their guidance, her power continued to grow. Her magical influence upon the nature of reality and pararealities continued to strengthen.

Her twenties became her thirties. She'd jokingly started to think of Mr. Fell as her nemesis, and then at some point the joke bled into reality. 

She was fighting tooth and nail through a particularly difficult transaction at Mr. Fell's shop, when she realized something. This was a realization that most mortals never managed to come to. Their minds slipped around the idea, like water, like air. But Nicole had considerable magic under her command, now, and was much better equipped to spot the mysterious than the typical human being.

The shopkeeper didn't look a day older than he had in her earliest memory.

During this lapse in her focus, Mr. Fell managed to sneak the book out of her hands.

"How old are you, Mr. Fell?" she asked.

The shine of triumph in his eyes from having prized the book back from her evaporated. He stuttered, a bit. "Oh, uh, well," he said, "One does lose track sometimes, doesn't he?"

She stared evenly at him. She'd long since come to the conclusion that Mr. Fell was a witch himself. Or at least someone who consorted with the arcane. There was no other explanation for his, well, everything. The bookstore. The peculiar behavior of his massive snake. The weird little inexplicable transpirations in and around the shop. His general vibration was distinctly magical. But agelessness? That was on a whole new and exciting realm that went right up against the very nature of reality, of physicality. She was hooked.

And just as she was about to bombard him with a whole new set of questions, he handed the book back to her, and said, smoothly, voice layered with some sort of feeling she couldn't place, "There now, dear. Why don't I ring you up? That'll be--"

Her mind swam sideways, abruptly dislocated from its train of thought. She bought the book, easily, went home with her prize, giddy with the joy of a particularly challenging purchase. She forgot all about the question of Mr. Fell's age, and never remembered it.

~

Nicole turned forty. She owned her own flat. She'd become more and more herself over the years. She had dated, had experienced heartbreak, had broken hearts. She possessed a gray and grouchy cat. She had a lush balcony garden full of herbs and flowers. She ran a small and steady business off the internet selling intangible goods. Se wore long black skirts. She had adopted a daughter, who was now four years old and every bit as lively and magical as she herself had been at that age.

She left her daughter in the care of her cousin, and took her birthday to indulge herself.

She visited the bookshop, armed to the teeth with cash, with wits, with determination.

The bookshop was open. It was unusually dark inside.

Mr. Fell leaned against a bookshelf near the back of the shop, staring blankly out into space. He occasionally raised a bottle of wine to his mouth and drank from it.

He looked, in a word, ragged. She realized, anew, as if for the first time, that he looked the same as he always had, the same as he had when she'd first visited the bookstore in her teens. But through the strength and clarity of her occult eye she could see that he also looked... old. Impossibly ancient. Tired. His aura slumped around him, battered. There was the shape of disappointment coming off him in waves, the sensation of agonized sorrow, of grief, of existential malaise.

A bookseller, with a bookshop. Who didn't want to part with any of his books.

 _How did you get here?_ She wanted to ask him. _Who are you? Why do I feel as though you're like me, in some strange and ineffable way?_

But instead, she recognized his apparent weakness as an opening to take possession of a book she'd had her sights on for actual years. She searched the store, efficiently, methodically, and found the heavy tome entitled _Practical Witchcraft._ She brought it to Mr. Fell, clutched tightly in her hands.

He looked at her, then looked down at the book. His mouth twisted.

"I suppose you're looking to make a purchase?" he asked, heavily.

She nodded.

They went over to the register. He didn't put up much of a fight. But he insisted, insisted that she allow him to wrap the book in protective wrapping paper. She did not want him to. Surely it was a ruse for him to snatch it out of her hands. But apparently he would not let her buy it unless she allowed him to wrap it.

So she watched, her gaze burning a very real and very magical threat into his hands as he wrapped the book. He wrapped it, and handed it back to her, and rung her up. She took the book into her hands, the owner of it now. A familiar giddiness bubbled in her gut.

Nicole looked up at the bookseller, and saw that he was looking at her, half-reproachfully, half-heartedly. He looked so very despondent.

She wanted to ask him what was wrong. But that didn't quite seem like the appropriate thing for a book-buying nemesis to ask of a reluctant book-seller. Perhaps he was going through some personal troubles. The two of them were familiar with each other, but it was a familiarity bred from repeated interactions, brief and impersonal. They didn't really know each other. It wasn't her place to ask.

She left the shop, had a lovely birthday, went home to her daughter.

That night, after her daughter had gone to bed, she brewed herself a cup of tea and cracked open _Practical Witchcraft._ Paging through the ancient words was a delight.

And then, she got to the middle of the book.

There was a whole chapter there that she didn't remember seeing before, when she'd browsed the book in the shop.

The chapter was entitled, _Crowley._ There were illustrations of the massive black snake done in ink, in charcoal, in watercolor, in some other sorts of mediums that she couldn't quite place. Of the snake in an idyllic garden, wrapped around a tree. Of the snake with its scales bleeding into wings. Of the snake with its body twined through hands, twisting through mountains, and skies, and rivers. There were paragraphs written in a text that made her head hurt when she tried to read it. There were images of the man, the peculiar black-clad man that Mr. Fell had called _"Crowley,"_ dressed in different styles and centuries. Most of the time the man wore dark glasses, but sometimes he didn't, and when he didn't, his eyes stared up from the page, gleaming and slitted and serpentine, leafed in actual gold.

She stared down at the book. 

It couldn't be explained.

When she closed the book, she forgot the chapter existed. When she would open it again, she'd experience it anew.

And anew.

And anew.

~

Eleven years later, Nicole happened to be passing the bookshop. She was accompanying her daughter and her daughter's friends to the movie theatre, where she would leave them and run some errands for herself.

Last week, everything had been oddly, inexplicably, and magically chaotic. Today, everything was back to normal. Mostly.

On the other side of the street, the bookshop. She saw Mr. Fell and Crowley, standing just in front of the shop, discussing something. They stood face to face, hands interlaced. And then Mr. Fell laughed, and kissed Crowley on the cheek, and let him go, went into his shop.

Crowley stood on the steps of the shop, crookedly, staring off into space. And then he got into a shiny black car, and left.

Something was magical about this. About the world. About what had transpired last week. Something was magical about all of it. Nicole didn't know exactly what. But she was sure of it, just as she was sure of the reality of things, of the numinous quality of that reality.

She hurried to catch up to her daughter.

~

Footnotes:

[1] Many witches find themselves in the profession by way of birthright, born to dark covenants in the middle of a Dark Wood, brought forth into the world by blood and Satanic chanting. Witches whose magical calling is assigned to them in this manner are often rather snooty about it. They think they are the only Proper witches. Nicole has come across more than a few of these sorts in her life, but never found their sense of superiority to be founded in any sort of actual sense. It can be quite a difficult undertaking, being a witch who became a witch by choice, who found her calling in the warm darkness of her heart, who found her power in the rumble of lightning speaking to her on fraught and sleepless nights, who honed her talent and skill at the craft with very little outside guidance. Nicole Percival Castings is the most powerful witch she knows. And she knows it. In her opinion, it helps to come to the altar of witchcraft with a burning desire and something to prove. [return to text]

[2] The power of her mind is very wide. In this instance, it had dominion over a box of matches. [return to text]

[3] Nicole's occult eye saw Mr. Fell's aura visibly preen at this, exactly like a bird, with actual wings. He preened, in an angry sort of way. This was a very confusing and weird thing to observe through her occult eye. [return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> thx 4 reading y’all.


End file.
